wendy's redesign

Wendy’s once again redesigned their logo. The previously known mark was a train wreck destroyed by a tornado. The large famously known typeface, the odd swirly things which represent nothing, but possibly curly fries? I don’t know. I’ve only been there a couple times. The yellow odd shaped placard thing that resembles the title holder on those Big Mouth Billy Bass fish things that suburban wannabe rednecks display on their garage walls. And what’s with the placement of it? It’s just a weird shaped background inside of a background that’s double outlined.

Now let’s move to the top. The girl. What’s with the uneven outline of the circle? Why is her hair popping up? Is their slogan, “quality is our recipe” so unimportant that it needs to be that small? If so, why are we even including it, let alone above everything else? The proportions are strange. And the colors are strange. Blue, red, yellow, white and black. Okay, I could go on, but we’ve covered the basics.

Now on to the new logo. As usual, first opinions don’t mean much because people are so familiar with the old logo and people like what they’re familiar with. People typically don’t like change because it temporarily disconnects them from that company. It happens with everything. People who preferred Facebook’s old site design over their new design would now, after time, hate to go back to that old one.

Anyway, the new Wendy’s logo…Again, I’m not a consumer. I’ve only been there twice in my life. I haven’t researched their company, or the history of their branding. I didn’t choose to because I didn’t want to ruin my opinion as a general consumer who likely won’t know that information.

It looks friendly. The girl isn’t too illustrated. It’s clean, it’s friendly, it’s refreshing. They dropped the trademark symbol, which also helps to make it more friendly. They had the confidence to change their historic connection, and a few other things a typographic dork might not like, but in the case of a logo, I think they pulled it off. It should be unique. This font, like many others that try this approach, looks like somebody actually did take a Sharpie and write the name. That’s difficult to pull off, and many, many, many people fail at perfecting that. I think it works because they didn’t try to follow typographic rules, because people don’t write thinking about typography. The designer(s) drew what they wanted to draw; not what they think they should draw.

The girl’s hair respects realism much more. And I love that she’s now breaking out of the circle. Smiling children aren’t portrayed as being calm and relaxed, and almost not noticeable. The new Wendy is more childlike. She’s breaking out of the circle. Her freakish passion for fast food is breaking out of the circle. She’s stylized. She has a personality that didn’t exist earlier this week. Her clothing is updated to be more relatable, but still contain that history.

The overall logo is unique enough to get recognition. It’s unlike any other fast food chain’s identity. Simply put, it’s respectable.